May 26 2011
FEI (NASDAQ: FEIC) and Whiting Oil and Gas Corporation, announce the purchase of QEMSCAN® automated petrography and Helios NanoLab™ DualBeam™ technology for Whiting’s new rock lab in its Denver, Colorado headquarters.
QEMSCAN provides data for reservoir characterization, including quantitative compositional and elastic properties critical for designing a successful hydraulic fracturing program. Given the intensive multi-rig drilling programs at Whiting, securing QEMSCAN technology in-house provides real-time solutions that can be applied prior to well completions. The QEMSCAN data is now being routinely used to calibrate older wireline logs, which were originally designed for conventional reservoirs but are, by themselves, inadequate in the characterization of the newer unconventional reservoirs Whiting is now targeting.
Much of the oil and gas in organic shales is contained in nanometer-scale pores. The Helios NanoLab DualBeam images porosity networks in three dimensions (3D) with nanometer-scale resolution.
According to Mark Williams, senior vice president of Exploration and Development for Whiting, “The addition of the QEMSCAN and Helios NanoLab DualBeam microscopes will significantly enhance our ability to characterize and qualify prospective unconventional hydrocarbon reservoirs while accelerating our workflow.”
Paul Scagnetti, vice president and general manager of the Natural Resources Division of FEI, stated, “The oil and gas industry needs new analysis solutions to tackle the challenges that come with developing unconventional reservoirs. FEI’s 3D nanoporosity analysis solution, including the Helios NanoLab DualBeam and QEMSCAN, provide 3D models that detail the complex microstructure of extremely fine-grained reservoirs, including the porosity, connectivity and organic content (kerogen).”